


I Had A Rule

by EtoileGarden



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: AU, Adam is Trying His Best, Communication, EVERYONE is trying their bests, Implied Child Abuse, Life is hard, M/M, Misunderstandings, Ronan is trying his best, Soulmark AU, Soulmate AU, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Swearing, There are other characters but they're barely mentioned so, adam pov, because i only wanted to focus on one relationship, canon suicide attempt, non-magic au, pre-blue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-14
Updated: 2019-02-14
Packaged: 2019-10-27 20:57:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17774108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EtoileGarden/pseuds/EtoileGarden
Summary: “Aren’t you ever curious?” Gansey asked, voice hushed as he stood beside Adam in the bathroom at Monmouth.Adam had come straight from work to Monmouth because Gansey wanted to go trekking around a new hiking track he’d discovered, and he’d gone to change in the bathroom. Gansey had come in to get a juice because apparently in this house there is no privacy. Ronan and Noah were out joyriding somewhere - if they had been here, Adam would have been more careful. As it was, Gansey had come in and gotten an eye full of the ink of Adam’s arms. Ronan had gone all out. He had tugged his shirt on quickly, but not quick enough.





	I Had A Rule

**Author's Note:**

> I am a sucker for soulmate au's in all their forms. As always - very, very little editing has gone into this.

Adam Parrish had grown up encased in rules, only some of which were given to him by his parents. Certainly a lot of his rules were made by his father, but those were reasonably simple rules next to Adam’s rules for himself. His father’s rules tended to be things like; ‘do as I tell you’, and ‘shut up’, and ‘know what I want from you and do it before I ask it’. 

 

Adam’s rules tended to be things more along the lines of; ‘If you’re not working or doing homework you’re wasting your life and you’ll be stuck here forever’, and, ‘if one more person sees a single one of my bruises this month I will be stuck here forever’, and, ‘I don’t care if my soulmate is right the hell in front of me, that’s something for Adam of the future’. 

 

The soulmate rule was a rule with a lot of additions and clauses and details, but all in all, it was actually very simple. If he met his soulmate in Henrietta, that would mean they would have to meet him in all his dust and glory and blood, and he wasn’t ok with that. If he met his soulmate in Henrietta, he might have to choose between leaving Henrietta forever and having a soulmate. Therefore, he was not allowed to meet his soulmate in Henrietta, and if he did? He had to ignore it. 

 

-   
  


The thing was. Adam Parrish had figured out who his soulmate was exactly five minutes after meeting him for the first time. It hadn’t been difficult, in fact, it had been stupidly easy. 

 

He had arrived for his first day at Aglionby Academy - a place he stuck out like a sore thumb, yet had worked himself to literal blood and tears for -, he had arrived at his Science class, had gone through the painful process of the teacher introducing him to the room, and then waving him to the only spare seat in the room. He had been introduced to Ronan Lynch who was in the seat next to the only spare seat for reasons which were immediately obvious when Lynch didn’t even look up at Adam’s greeting, and only grunted at the teacher prodding him to introduce himself. Ronan Lynch had ignored Adam - and the teacher - for the entire class. Ronan fucking Lynch drew birds, and snakes, and vines all over his unopened text book cover, and then, when he had run out of space, had rolled up his sleeves and continued his doodles up his arms, and Adam. 

 

Adam had had to sit there pretending he couldn’t feel the tip of the black ball point pen dragging up his skin and leaving marks he couldn’t rub off himself. He could pretend this because he was wearing long sleeves so as to hide his already marked up skin - a starting school gift from his father -, and because he had spent his entire life learning how to stay small and quiet and unaffected. He had to pretend it because he had rules for his life, and he intended to follow them. Also he could pretend he wasn’t feeling Ronan drawing all over his arms because so far Adam’s entire opinion of Ronan was that he was a pretentious, rich, asshole of a raven boy and even if he didn’t have any rules he wouldn’t have just turned around and announced they were soulmates. 

 

-

 

Maybe for other people it would be difficult to not clue in their soulmate that they had met, but this was covered by another of Adam’s many rules for himself. He never drew or wrote on his skin. Firstly, because his hands were chafed and dry enough without ink poisoning, secondly, because he wanted to look tidy and clean for school and for the world even though his insides were all dust and dirt, and thirdly (and most importantly) because soulmarks were one of his father’s biggest pet peeves and Adam had learned this very, very (very) early on, and had never forgotten the lesson he had learned. 

 

(The lesson was this. 

 

His parents were not soulmates. His father had never met his soulmate. His mother had. Too late. They had been married already, Adam had been born already, when the first lines appeared on her. His father did not appreciate this. She was not allowed to reply - even to say she was taken - she was not allowed to write anything. If his father found anything, everyone was in trouble. The same rules applied for Adam because, ‘soulmates are stupid, pandering, romantic idiocy, and if I catch you ever tryin’ to make friends through your skin I’ll tear the words right off of you’. 

 

It was his mother’s rule, and it was his rule, and Robert Parrish was the law keeper for this particular case, and Adam had no intention of breaking this rule while under his roof.) 

 

-

 

So. He had ignored Ronan all through that first school day, and had only examined the intricate drawings much later in the safety of his own room late that night. Then he continued to ignore Ronan, and continued to ignore the tickling feeling of Ronan’s constant doodling, and shifted where he sat in Science to minimise the risk of Ronan noticing. This was easier to do than expected, because someone dropped out of class within the first week, and Adam had quickly slotted himself into that new spare seat. No one had questioned it, Ronan’s reputation was enough that they all understood. 

 

He would probably have managed to keep this up for a long time, maybe until he’d actually managed to escape Henrietta and his father, if it wasn’t for Gansey, Ronan’s best friend, golden child of Aglionby, and surprisingly nice dude, suddenly sucking him into his life and somehow becoming his friend while Adam was distracted. 

 

-

 

Ronan didn’t suddenly stop being an asshole just because Adam was friends with his best friend, in fact, if anything, he upped the ante on the asshole thing for the first fortnight or so that Adam was hanging out with them. Gansey said he was just bad at emotions and meeting people, and he’d calm down. Adam replied that that sounded like Ronan was a badly behaved dog. Noah - another of Ronan and Gansey’s friends - said that Ronan was more like a jealous cat than a dog, and that he just couldn’t bear having to watch his owner stroke another cat. Adam replied that that entire analogy made him uncomfortable and vaguely itchy and Gansey promised not to stroke him. Ronan hadn’t been with them during this conversation because he had been busy across the field having a fight with his older brother which somehow ended up with a rubbish bin in a tree. 

 

Adam was very grateful for his rules having stopped him from even considering letting Ronan know about the appearance of his soulmarks. But. Even while Ronan was an asshole, a loud mouthed, crude shithead, a raven with more teeth than feathers - even while Adam still thought all of this about him - he had the doodles on his skin that seemed to hint that that wasn’t really quite what Ronan was. 

 

Maybe there were too many sharp fanged snakes, and evil looking birds, and swear words being drawn on Adam’s skin through Ronan’s, but … there was an equal amount of coiling vines, bursting with flowers, words and phrases in latin that took Adam a while to interpret but proved to be worth the effort. As well as the doodles, there were the occasional snippets of written conversation between Noah and Ronan on Ronan’s forearm, which, Adam felt maybe a little weird about ‘eavesdropping’, but not too weird because the conversations tended to be about fart jokes and how boring their teachers were. Still. It showed Adam a softer Ronan, a Ronan that told jokes and wanted flowers and the sky, and couldn’t keep his hands still because he was bursting with ideas that school didn’t want. 

 

Ronan never drew on his hands, which Adam was very glad for because he wouldn’t be able to keep his hands hidden from both Ronan and his father at all times. His arms were hard enough, especially with spring beginning. It didn’t matter that it was hard, though, he would find a way around it because not doing so wasn’t worth considering. 

 

-

 

Ronan and Noah, when they held their text conversation via their arms, tended to only do so during the classes they had together at school. Adam had never seen them do it out of school, which is why it was surprising when, as he was changing out of his overalls at Boyds so he could bike home one evening, he glanced down at the familiar tickle on his wrist to see Noah’s familiar handwriting looping starkly across a yellow thumb shaped bruise. 

 

‘Breathe’, it said, paused, and then, again, underlined, ‘breathe’. 

 

This did not fit the usual conversational tone he was used to reading from Ronan and Noah. Especially when Ronan’s spiky handwriting didn’t join in. 

 

Usually, Ronan would wash the conversations at least off of his skin reasonably quickly, but when Adam woke up the next morning, ‘Breathe, breathe’ was still there, reminding him to do something he already did. It was irritating, because it was so high up his wrist he would have to be careful the whole school day so as not to let it peek out and be seen. 

 

Ronan wasn’t at school that day, which wasn’t unusual per se, but, well. Adam couldn’t exactly ask him what the ‘breathe’ had been about, but he could try and figure it out, and it was difficult to figure anything out when you didn’t have any data in front of you. 

 

-

 

Possibly the time he came closest to telling Ronan they were soulmates was the following week, when Noah wrote, in huge marker block letters, ‘FART KING’ across the entirety of Ronan’s chest, during school hours, and Adam hadn’t quite realised until he was in the changing room for weights class and had had to perform several evasive maneuvers to keep his new chest decoration private. This was not a romantic desire, not at all, this was more of a, ‘I’m going to rip your head off of your shoulders and throw it into the ocean if you don’t stop graffiting me through fucking fate’ declaration. 

 

In fact, he was trying to make sure that there was no romantic desire occurring within him for Ronan at all, which at the very beginning of all of this he had thought would be an easy thing to do. Because, he knew he was stupidly emotional. Sure, he could keep a stoic face, and appear as calm and unmoving as a rock face in public, but he couldn’t fake it to himself. He over analysed everything. Every hard word and failure and misstep buried itself painfully in his skin and his heart and his brain. Some days it took him all he had to wipe his face and clear his expression and reset himself for the rest of the world. He knew that if he allowed himself to feel...anything… anything  _ tender _ towards Ronan, that he would spiral, that he’d lose sensibility over it. 

 

It had been easy to do until he found that he was looking forward to watching Ronan doodle on his arms during class, looking forward to going home and getting to see them on his own skin. Until he was beginning to wake up in the mornings and be comforted when he knew Ronan was already awake because there was an early morning flower, or bird, or reminder scrawled onto his skin. Until he found himself going to bed at night thinking about the breathe on his wrist, and, he knew it was Noah who had written it, but it stupidly felt like it was Ronan telling him to breathe. 

 

To breathe through how shitty waking up in his tiny room to the sound of his father yelling. To breathe through the dust and overly hot work room in the factory. To breathe through the discomfort of not feeling right at Aglionby. 

 

He refused to feel anything romantic for Ronan. It went against his rules. 

 

-

 

Sometimes he wondered if Ronan drawing on himself near constantly was because he was trying to be extra visible for his eventual soulmate, but, really, it made much more sense that it was simply because Ronan always seemed like he was itchy. Like he was constantly vibrating with a need for more, for faster, for out, and when he was sitting in class the only thing he could do to let it out was to race ink up and down his arms like if he stopped moving his hands he was going to self combust. Also, the topic of soulmates came up occasionally within their small friend group - and just in general - and Ronan never participated in any meaningful way. Gansey had many, many opinions on soulmates, the science parts of it and the more unknown parts. He was willing to argue about it from whatever end - that it hindered real romantic relationships, that it was simply another construct, that calling them ‘soulmarks’ was probably too strong a name - but Adam knew, ,just  _ knew _ , that Gansey loved the idea of soulmarks. The way he talked about them when it was just the small few of them, like it was a gift he had been promised and had been looking forward to. 

 

Ronan never spoke up to belittle Gansey’s love of the romance of it, but neither did he have anything else to say. When he’d been asked, one Latin class, whether he was talking with his soulmates through his arm graffiti, he had simply pulled the finger and continued to add more detail to the already very detailed dick with wings and also a skateboard on his arm. If Adam had had a phone, he would definitely have taken a photo of it when he had gotten home. If only for the possibility of one day - far in the future - showing Ronan how ridiculous he was. 

 

-

 

‘Tomorrow’, Noah’s handwriting said on Adam’s wrist as he mowed the lawn outside the trailer. Nothing else. 

 

-

 

A month into being friends with Gansey, and Adam was no longer feeling vague about his place in the friend group. At first he had wondered if maybe this was just a pity play on Gansey’s part, and once he felt he’d done his best, he’d release Adam back into the wilds of Aglionby. But. He didn’t, because he was actually a decent human being and a good friend, even if he and Adam often frequented the same handful of arguments about money and gifts and over such things. By this point, Ronan was still a complete asshole, but, a complete asshole that would invite Adam over to Monmouth - where he lived with Noah and Gansey - and would play video games with him, and drive the two of them in donuts in front of Monmouth, or persuade Adam into doing stupid things like swimming in the streams just out of town even though it was freezing, and trying to ride skateboards down a bush path. So, they were friends, but. Ronan obviously didn’t think they were friends enough to let Adam in on half of what he was thinking or feeling. Of course, Adam wouldn’t realise that to the same extent if he didn’t get to see all of Ronan’s doodles and conversations on his own arms, but. 

 

He didn’t know how to ask Ronan if he was ok without looking like he cared more than Ronan wanted him to. Without somehow admitting that they had met and Adam had had a jigsaw puzzle finish in his head. Anyway. They all knew Ronan wasn’t  _ ok _ . 

 

-

 

“I’m just worried,” Gansey whispered. Ronan and Noah were over by the field, something about heckling Ronan’s younger brother Matthew, ‘but in a nice way, dick, don’t look so worried’. 

 

“About?” Adam prompted, squishing his writing tiny so he could fit in the rest of his essay on the last page of refill he had. He knew what Gansey was worried about. 

 

Gansey grimaced at him, he knew that Adam knew. “He’s been drinking more,” he said, fiddling with his pen. “He acts so wild during the day and then at night it’s like he’s…” 

 

Gansey didn’t finish, either because he didn’t want to or he couldn’t think of a good enough analogy. He clicked his pen on and off instead. Adam downsized his writing again. 

 

“He talks to Noah about it, doesn’t he?” he offered after a few more moments. “Does he talk to you?” 

 

Gansey looked pained. “I don’t know how much he tells Noah,” he said, “I only know that he doesn’t tell him enough. Noah’s worried too.” 

 

“You should tell Declan if you’re worried about him,” Adam said, “it’s not your job to look after him.” 

 

“Please,” Gansey looked almost amused here, “Ronan would see that as the ultimate betrayal.” 

 

“What are you worried is going to happen?” Adam asked. He finally finished the essay - managing to just fit it all on the page - “I know he’s… rough around the edges - or everywhere - and that he’s… he’s had some shit happen to him, but. Is it his driving that worries you? Declan could at least get his licence taken off of him or something.” 

 

Gansey’s almost amusement is back to pain. “Like that would stop Ronan,” he said, then shook his head. “I just wish,” he said, “that you’d met Ronan before it all happened. I know it looks like this is just how Ronan is. Always has been. But it isn’t. He’s always been a sarcastic ass, but. Jesus, Parrish. He used to be happy.” 

 

“He isn’t now?” Adam asked, because, he knew Ronan wasn’t exactly a beacon of joy or anything, but he had fun. “I mean -” 

 

“He’s not,” Gansey said, “I love every version of Ronan, but I miss the happy version, for him as well as for me.” 

 

-

 

That was something. Gansey was so… free with his admissions of love and affection. A week into spending time with Adam Gansey had announced that he was a perfect man, and Adam had heard him often, quite openly, tell Noah or Ronan that he loved them. He had even heard Noah say it back, watched Ronan soften at it. Of course, it wasn’t like this was news to Adam - that you could love someone platonically. He supposed most families loved each other platonically, and most normal people probably loved their best friends and so on so forth, he knew all of that, just because he hadn’t experienced it didn’t mean he didn’t know it. But seeing it in front of him, so intimately, gave him a little bit of hope. Or, not hope, relief. Because it made the whole not thinking of Ronan in a romantic way easier, because he could just dress up all of his various feelings and emotions about Ronan in a platonic hat and call it just that. Easy. 

 

-

 

At midnight on a friday (now a very early saturday), a small blue ballpoint heart was drawn against Adam’s veins as he washed the dirt and grease from Boyd’s off of his hands. While he rinsed the soap off, he watched as another heart follows, and another, and another, until his wrist was busy with it and overflowing to the next wrist. He went to bed and squinted at his skin in the dim light of a flickering lamp outside his window as Noah wrote, slow and sloping. ‘I love you’. 

 

He wondered if it’s the same sort of love that Gansey holds for Ronan. Brotherly. Friendly. He wondered if Noah and Ronan holds conversations on skin so often because they don’t get to do it through soulmarks. He wondered if he felt jealous about this, or guilty about this, or strange about this. He wondered if Gansey knew. 

 

-

 

“Pass me the calculator?” Gansey mumbled across the floorboards. It was a Thursday afternoon, and he and Adam had a Calculus test tomorrow morning, and were studying it while Ronan and Noah hooned around loudly outside. 

 

The calcular was by Adam’s elbow. He picked it up, slid it over to Gansey, got stuck on an equation, and ended up with his arm outstretched and stuck in position while his brain tried to whirr out an answer. 

 

“I’ve never seen you draw on yourself,” Gansey said while Adam wrote his answer down in a flourish. 

 

His arm was outstretched still, fingers lazy across the top of the calculator, sleeve dragged down on the floorboard between them, a few lines of Ronan’s lunchtime doodling visible at the top of his wrist. He pulled his arm back as if he had been burned. 

 

“Oh,” Gansey said. He had been slumped over his book, but he straightened up now, narrowed his eyes at Adam. “Are they not… yours?” 

 

“They’re mine,” Adam said, too fast. 

 

“Yours,” Gansey said, “as in your soulmate?” 

 

Adam winced, tried to focus his mind back on Calculus, but his mind wasn’t having it. “I don’t want to talk about it,” he said. 

 

“You’ve met them?” Gansey asked, voice hushed. 

 

Adam shrugged one shoulder. 

 

“Do you know who it is?” Gansey asked, “When did this happen? Why didn’t you say anything?” 

 

“I’m pretty sure they’re with someone else,” Adam said, shrugged his other shoulder, “they don’t know we’ve been linked.” 

 

“Oh,” Gansey said, confusion evident in his voice, “oh, Adam. I’m sorry.” 

 

“Don’t be,” Adam said, “I’m not. I don’t have time for a soulmate right now, anyway.” 

 

“Don’t you feel like it’s… like it’s only fair to let them know you’re here, though?” 

 

“Why bother if they’re happy with someone else?” Adam asked. His brain was starting to remember how to focus on calculus again. 

 

“Are they?” Gansey asked, “Happy?” 

 

Calculus. 

 

-

 

The night he got the call from Gansey, he hadn’t been drawn on at all, which in retrospect he found a little odd. The call had been Gansey frantic. Frantic because Ronan was gone, and he was scared that it meant that - 

He was scared that it meant that Ronan was going to do something stupid, and by this point, Adam had put together exactly what it was Gansey had been worrying about the entire time he’d known them both. 

 

It had turned out that Ronan had done exactly what Gansey had been worrying about, and had, thankfully, not quite succeeded, and Adam didn’t get to hear about any of this for a full three days because he was caught trying to sneak out of the trailer to help go look for Ronan and his father had grounded him both verbally and physically. 

 

So. 

 

It felt strange to him that there would have been no doodling during the day of it happening. He would have thought that Ronan would have been pouring with restless energy or anxiety. It was odd to think of a Ronan so paralysed and still from his own feelings that he wouldn’t even draw. It was odd to think of a Ronan in hospital, bandaged and pale. It was odd to think of a Ronan who didn’t want to be making a ruckus. 

 

Nothing was transferred onto his skin for a full five days after the phone call, by which time Ronan had been released - into Declan’s custody for now - and Adam had seen him very briefly, and caught up with Gansey and Noah. 

 

The ink was all in patches - like he was only getting fragments of a whole piece - and it took Adam probably far too long to realise that was because Ronan must be drawing on the bandages as well as his skin. That couldn’t be good for the healing cuts. He wanted to get Gansey to call Declan. Get Declan to stop Ronan from pressing pen to open skin - even with a bandage in the way. 

 

-

 

Things went back to normal within a month - or as normal as things can get when you’ve had a someone in your friend group try to kill themselves. Ronan returned to Monmouth, returned to Aglionby, returned to drawing on his arms. His arms were a stark reminder, raised lines and pink lines and still a few lingering plaster. He’d wrapped his wrists in leather bands, as if that would distract from the mess of them. Adam had this terrible, stupid urge to run his thumb over Ronan’s arm, to feel it all, because he still couldn’t wrap his head around it properly. Still couldn’t - 

 

-

 

‘BUY MILK’ Gansey’s handwriting in orange felt tip declared on the back of Adam’s hand. Very unuseful. It was far too warm to wear gloves. He was already well and truly pushing it with the long sleeves. He needed Ronan to hurry up and wash this reminder off of their hands - even if it meant forgetting the milk. He was supposed to go to Monmouth that afternoon - after he’d finished his shift at the warehouse - and he couldn’t go there where both the author of the request, and the receiver of the request would recognise what it was on Adam’s hand. This was probably not going to be the first time he was going to have to skip out on meeting up with his friends to avoid being found out. It was only good luck he’d avoided it for so long. He called Gansey to let him know he couldn’t make it. He wondered if Ronan had bought the milk. 

 

-

 

He had thought that maybe, know he had what he thought was an insight into a deeper part of Ronan and Noah’s relationship, that he would be able to start seeing hints of it from the outside too - not just from the private conversations on his skin. He had started to feel a little guilty about that. If Ronan knew that his so called ‘soulmate’ could read everything he was writing, he probably wouldn’t be writing it. Not that he was ever writing anything too private, never anything that really made Adam think he shouldn’t be reading it. The majority of the conversation was stupid jokes and hangman games, and occasionally just Noah by himself writing brief words of affirmation, or drawings hearts upon hearts on Ronan. 

 

Still. Watch and observe as he did, he never could seem to pick up on anything at all, which maybe shouldn’t have been a surprise. He already knew how much of himself Ronan liked to hide inside himself. If he wasn’t out to anyone apart from Noah, this was probably something he kept a very deeply hidden secret. 

 

He’d watch carefully when Ronan was sitting next to Noah at lunch, try to see if their hands ever dragged against each others on the seat between them, or if their shoulders pressed together for longer than just a friendly nudge. Sometimes Noah would nap against Ronan, and Ronan would have his arm tossed around Noah’s shoulders to hold him upright, but, also sometimes Noah would nap against Gansey in exactly the same way. He had even used Adam as a napping spot before. 

 

He didn’t share any classes with Ronan and Noah together, so he didn’t get to see them interact in class together, but he did get to watch their doodles on his arm, so. 

 

It was all very confusing. 

 

Confusing because he wasn’t sure if he was sure that Ronan and Noah were a secret ‘thing’, and confusing because he wasn’t sure if he was sure that he didn’t care if they were. 

 

Sometimes Ronan would catch him watching, which was unsettling because Adam had long perfected watching people without being seen watching. It was something he had always prided himself on, melding into the background and observing without feeling observed in return, but. With Ronan, it began happening more often that not that Adam would be watching from across the classroom, or across a table, or even right beside him, and Ronan would lift his eyes up and catch his gaze, and then just hold it until Adam would look away in feigned disinterest. 

 

Sometimes too, he would catch Ronan watching him first, and he wondered about that. Ronan had always watched him when he didn’t think Adam would notice - Adam always noticed because he was Adam - and at the beginning Adam had thought it was an intimidation thing, and then he had thought it was because he was trying to figure out why Gansey would be friends with him, and then he had thought it was because he was looking for flaws to pick at - like a loose thread in his jumper, or a bruise on his neck, a smudge of dirt on his face. 

 

Now he didn’t know what it was. Maybe it was just the fact that they were friends, plain and simple. 

 

-

 

“Aren’t you ever curious?” Gansey asked, voice hushed as he stood beside Adam in the bathroom at Monmouth. 

 

Adam had come straight from work to Monmouth because Gansey wanted to go trekking around a new hiking track he’d discovered, and he’d gone to change in the bathroom. Gansey had come in to get a juice because apparently in this house there is no privacy. Ronan and Noah were out joyriding somewhere - if they had been here, Adam would have been more careful. As it was, Gansey had come in and gotten an eye full of the ink of Adam’s arms. Ronan had gone all out. He had tugged his shirt on quickly, but not quick enough. 

 

“About what?” He asked. 

 

“About whether or not you’d be a better match with your soulmate than whoever they’re with? I mean, statistically it has been proven that -” 

 

“I know the stats as well as you do,” Adam groaned, rubbing at his arm through his sleeve, “I know.” 

 

“So?” Gansey prompted. 

 

“So,” Adamm shrugged. “It’s not just about their happiness, man.” 

 

Gansey waited for him to expand. Adam wished he wouldn’t. Despite his best attempts, his friends knew about his homelife, knew about how his father doled out punishments. Knew about the bruises and the broken bones. 

 

“I don’t want to date anyone until I’m out of here,” he said, “just having friends is hard enough - which isn’t a dig at you guys - it’s just. My father already thinks I skive off too much spending time with y’all. I couldn’t get away with… dating.” 

 

“Alright,” Gansey said, although his face said that he wanted to argue. “I understand. I guess I”m just - I’m just concerned that if you leave it too long, your soulmate will… I don’t know. Give up? Settle down with someone else?” 

 

“Also,” Adam said firmly, deciding he may as well bite this bullet, “as for my soulmate’s happiness? I don’t think he’s out. I don’t want to force him to make any decision before he’s ready to do that himself.” 

 

It took Gansey a full minute, and then he quickly reconstructed his expression so he wasn’t gaping at Adam. 

 

“Oh,” he said, and then, “so, forgive me, I didn’t realise - you’re gay?” 

 

“Bi,” Adam shrugged, “it’s not a big deal, but it is another thing that I probably shouldn’t be doing in Henrietta.” 

 

“It’s so stupid,” Gansey muttered, “how people like to go on and on about how soulmarks and mates are fate and destiny and true love until it’s with someone that doesn’t fit their view of the world and then it’s ‘oh sometimes there are mistakes’, and, ‘some soulmates are platonic’, and -” 

 

“Gansey,” Adam sighed, “I appreciate your righteous anger on this subject, but I don’t really wanna talk about it.” 

 

“Right,” Gansey said. “So,” he said, “that hike?” 

 

“Yup.” 

 

-

 

It was after a particularly long and painful week that it happened. Adam had agreed to take a few extra shifts at the warehouse because his father had sprained his ankle and couldn’t work as much, but it had also coincided with some tests at school, and his father being in pain meant he thought everyone ought to be in pain, and. It was difficult, to say the least. He spent the week in various states of exhaustion. He’d had to go to class on Wednesday with a steadily darkening shiner. It was hot and his long sleeves made him sweaty and irritable. He felt like he was constantly choking on the heat, and the work, and the pain, and his own tears of fucking frustration. 

 

He had gone to Monmouth late that evening after his shift at Boyd’s, because he’d left his science book on the table at lunch, and Gansey had picked it up but hadn’t managed to get it back to him before Adam had disappeared after school, so. He had gone to pick his book up before cycling home, and maybe he hadn’t been in the best of moods. And maybe his eyes looked a little pink. And maybe he’d barely spoken at all, and then in only brittle words. He had cycled home, and then, as he was putting his bike away behind the trailer, he’d felt new words press into his skin. He almost missed it, thinking it the trickle of sweat down his arm, but when he lifted the sleeve there it was. 

 

‘Breathe,” it said, like it had months ago, ‘breathe.’ 

 

It irritated him at first, because, it was just Noah having a moment with Ronan, and it was just Adam watching this moment alone in the dark and the heat. And then he realised the writing was wrong. It was sharp and spiked and thicker than Noah’s writing. It was very definitely Ronan’s handwriting. 

 

He went inside to shower, to sleep. He wondered if Ronan was ok, if in Adam’s bad mood he’d missed Ronan’s worse mood. He wondered how often Ronan needed the reminder to breathe. He breathed slowly, focused solely on his lungs filling with air. He wished - stupidly - that it was purposeful. Ronan reaching out to comfort him like this. 

 

-

 

The ‘breathe’’s were still on his wrist the next morning, a glaringly bright Saturday, but washed off by lunchtime, and then, nothing else appeared on his skin. Though Ronan tended to doodle on himself less in the weekend - because he had more time to get his energy and frustration out through other things - there was still usually at least something once a day, and yet. Nothing. On Sunday, again, nothing at all, which was very odd because the hours that Ronan spent in church usually meant at least once instance of needing to scribble all over his skin in latin. Nothing at all. 

 

He was perhaps a little worried. Had Ronan broken both his arms and no one had told him? Had Ronan had another bad, bad, fucking bad night and gone off and tried again and no one had discovered him yet? Ought he have called Gansey when the ‘breathe’’s appeared on his wrist? He couldn’t deny that maybe, by Sunday evening, maybe he was panicking a little. He cycled to Monmouth, sleeves rolled up because he could. 

 

Ronan was sprawled on the front steps of Monmouth, Noah beside him, Gansey’s voice coming from just inside. They were obviously on their way out - probably to get some greasy pizza, or to get groceries. 

 

“Adam!” Noah said, brightly and loudly as Adam came to a stop, unsure if he should even continue now he had evidence that Ronan was alive and well and staring at him from the stoop. “What a nice surprise!” 

 

“Parrish?” Gansey called, stepping out of Monmouth with a bag over his shoulder (groceries, then), “Oh, hello! What brings you here?” 

 

“I,” Adam said, he was trying to look Ronan over without being too obvious about it, “I was in the area. Thought I”d drop by. But you’re going out? I’ll just head off.” 

 

“Come with,” Ronan grunted, “we’re just getting groceries.” 

 

“Oh,” Adam said, “I mean -” 

 

“Come on,” Noah said, “we need someone sensible to mediate between Ronan ‘buy all the chips’ Lynch, and Richard ‘I’ve read this is good for you’ Gansey. Did you know he buys a packet of spirulina every time we go shopping? He never drinks it! Ronan and I use it sometimes to make sludge bombs.” 

 

He went shopping with them. 

 

Afterwards, Ronan somehow managed to cajole him into a shopping trolley. Somehow managed to convince him that the grazes and the bruises and the humiliation of crashing a shopping trolley was worth the payout of the rush of adrenaline it caused. He was maybe right.  Gansey pointed out that after that, he didn’t think they could really call Adam sensible after all. 

 

-

 

Ronan hadn’t drawn on his arms for a week  by the time that Adam caved and started wearing t-shirts regularly. He had been watching Ronan suspiciously in class, waiting for pen to touch skin, but it just hadn’t happened. Ronan continued to draw all over his books and papers, but never his arms. Maybe he had decided he didn’t like how scrappy it looked with his singlets. Maybe someone had freaked him out with the idea of ink poisoning. Maybe he just wanted to keep his art; something he couldn’t do when his canvas was something that needed washing regularly. 

 

He lived another two weeks in the constant fear that Ronan would suddenly write something else while Adam had his arms out and in public, but, nothing. Just nothing. Thankfully, because it was fucking hot. 

 

He did kind of miss the drawings though. The constant presence of Ronan right there. He wondered if maybe he and Noah had broken up - if they had ever been a thing - and that was why Ronan had stopped, because, there had been nothing from Noah this whole time, either. But. Noah and Ronan were still as thick as thieves, so. He didn’t know. 

 

-

 

During the summer holidays, they spent a lot of time up in the hills around Henrietta. Following old hiking trails, and new hiking trails, and finding interesting bugs and old shit, and generally mucking around. Adam was still working, of course, so they mostly went in the evenings, or in the weekends, but today was a rare Tuesday that he had nothing on, and they had gone out early in the day, and now they were somewhere in the middle of wherever with a picnic and the full sun and a deep cool pool with a stream running out of it. 

 

They had all swum to their heart's content, and then Gansey and Adam had gotten out to drip dry on the hot grass while Ronan and Noah bombed each other and then climbed up the cliff face by the pool - where Adam assumed a waterfall would run when the weather stopped being so dry - and sat up there with their feet dangling and threw rocks at each other and the water. 

 

He hadn’t been watching them, because watching Ronan and Noah together sometimes tangled his guts up in an odd way, but he felt it immediately. He had no idea how Ronan had a writing implement up there in the rocks, particularly one that still worked after so much swimming. 

 

It didn’t work very well though. Ronan was writing slowly and carefully into the middle of his palm, the ink coming in spurts. 

 

‘I want to kiss you’, it said, very simple, very complicated. Adam closed his hand in a fist around the words, didn’t lift his head up to look up the cliff face. He didn’t want to spy on a private moment. He didn’t want to see anything. He shut his eyes and pressed his face into the dry grass, smelled the dirt and salt. 

 

-

 

The words washed off quickly, Ronan had had to swim back across the pool to get back to them, the water cleaning them both. Adam hadn’t looked at him, hadn’t looked at Noah, had tried to swallow down the gross jealousy bitter in his throat. 

 

He wanted to tell Ronan, if only so Ronan would never again write that into Adam’s hand when it was meant for someone else. He couldn’t tell Ronan. 

 

-

 

The coming year was an important year, for many reasons, but the most important was that it was the year Adam would get his life boat out of here. Everything hinged on him getting that boat. He had to make sure he sent out enough applications to schools, that he wrote the best entrance essays he’d ever written, that he had enough money to make the move. This was why he had taken on a couple more shifts at Boyd’s earlier this year, why he hadn’t told his parents that he was earning more money. Because he needed that money. He was careful, and he had planned, and he knew what he was doing. (Important also because once he was out of Henrietta? Maybe he could write to Ronan and let him know. Maybe Ronan wouldn’t hate him or it.)

 

So. Because he had been so careful in all his planning, and in all his working, and for his whole damned life, he wasn’t expecting to come home one day (Ronan driving him because they’d been out together since Adam had finished work, Ronan half teaching Adam stick, half encouraging him to turn doughnuts. Adam pretending he didn’t feel guilty about being with someone else's partner while he was trying to pretend he didn’t feel things for them.) to his father waiting for him with receipts. It had quite honestly been the last thing on his mind. 

 

At first, when he’d seen his father’s expression, he wondered if his father had somehow seen the soulmarks (barely there now, but occasionally, occasionally, Ronan  (or maybe Noah) would draw a tiny heart into his palm or his wrist, or, (and this was Ronan) write latin things about hands onto his hand), despite how careful Adam had been with hiding those from everyone. Then he had thought maybe his father was just drunk and mad because Adam was back in the evening and not in the day. And then he thought he was just mad. And then he had found out why he was mad and in a very quick succession of events been all but thrown down the stairs. 

 

He didn’t want to think about anything that had happened then. About how Ronan hadn’t left because he had heard the yelling. About how Ronan had come back at fought his father. About how Adam had effectively kicked himself out of his own house for reporting his father so that Ronan wouldn’t get in trouble. He didn’t want to think about how Gansey had paid for the hospital and Adam couldn’t even argue about that because he couldn’t have. He didn’t want to think about how he’d never hear out of his left ear ever again. He didn’t want to think about how he was homeless and a burden, and sleeping at his friends’ and he could barely offer anything in return, and he definitely didn’t want to think about the words that had appeared in his palm after Noah had told Adam to take his room and that he’d bunk with Ronan and everyone had gone to bed, Adam to Noah’s, Noah’s to Ronan’s. 

 

‘I love you’, they said, and then quickly, quickly,that had been smudged out, rubbed off, replaced. ‘Everything will be ok’. 

 

-

 

He only had to spend a week at Monmouth. A very long week in which he felt like a pimple during a date, and slept badly even though Noah’s bed was comfortable, and relished how thick the walls were because it meant he was allowed to cry about his whole situation - the half deaf thing, the homeless thing, the parents hating him even more than ever thing, the knowing that his soulmate loved someone else thing - without worrying about being overheard and punished for being weak, or some other archaic shit. 

 

St Agnes - Ronan’s church - had a flat they rented out to people in need, and Ronan had let Adam know, and Adam had gotten the flat, and Adam was not thinking about whether or not he had gotten the flat because Ronan had pulled strings for him. He didn’t want to owe Ronan anything more. He didn’t want to want Ronan any more than he did. 

 

He moved into St Agnes, and attempted to pretend like this was how his life was supposed to be going, and he re-jigged his plans to fit this fuck up into it, and he re-wrote his budget and found he’d have actually a little more money living here (so long as he lived off noodles and coke), and he ignored the more and more constant messages in his palm. 

 

Things actually started going quite well. Not perfect, obviously, because this was Adam’s life, but. Pretty good. He could ditch his parents’ rules, so he could study later, and hang with his friends more, and keep all the money he earned for his own expenses, and he found himself almost pleased over what had happened. Not properly pleased, though it was hard to explain to his friends because - because how were they supposed to understand that while he did get that he was abused, and that leaving was the best thing for him, while he got that, he still hadn’t wanted to leave because that had been his  _ home _ . He still got homesick even though his home had been a place for leaving, a place for bleeding. 

 

It was lonely at St Agnes by himself, even if it was safer, and his, and so much of what he had longed for for years. 

 

It made him feel like an idiot, lying on his mattress late at night wishing stupidly that he could hear the breathing of someone else to prove to him that he wasn’t alone. Wishing stupidly that the word smudged in his palm was directed at him, not just coincidentally on him. Wishing stupidly that his rules made sense and it was because of his rules that he wasn’t telling Ronan, not because he was scared, scared, scared. 

 

-

 

It was a very odd day when it happened. The four of them, Ronan, Gansey, Noah, and him, were driving a little out of Henrietta for a fair (which was an odd thing for Adam to be going to in the first place), because Gansey had heard that there was going to be an antique table with actually interesting items, and because Ronan wanted to go on the fear fall, and because Noah wanted the blue candy floss and to play the creepy clown game (where you throw a ball in a gaping clown mouth because apparently that makes sense and is fun for children), and Adam was going because he wanted to spend time with his friends, and to act like a teenager, and to go on the fear fall with Ronan because both Noah and Gansey had refused. 

 

They had gone on the fear fall, and Ronan had whooped and yelled and cheered and insisted they go again, and Adam had stayed as quiet as possible and had apparently gone a little pale, but had agreed to again. And Noah was feeling ill and looked a little blue around the mouth, but had also won about six giant teddy bears (four of which he’d given away to disheartened children) and Gansey had bought a good handful of appropriately weird and wacky ‘antiques’, and they were all hungry and had met up at a nachos stall and bought a ridiculous amount of nachos, and the girl behind the counter had smiled and smiled at Adam, and he had smiled back, and when he had reached over with his share of money, she’d reached back and taken his wrist and written her number onto it.

 

He had whipped his hand back so fast the pen cut into his skin, and his money went flying. She looked horrified and embarrassed, and in any other situation Adam would have apologised profusely but Ronan was standing right there, by his shoulder, and there was no way in hell he couldn't have felt that pen on his skin. And if there was a way in hell - at some point soon he was going to look down and see the cut off series of numbers on the back of his hand and realise, and - 

 

“I have to go to the bathroom,” he mumbled, stepping quickly away from the stall. 

 

Gansey and Noah were already sitting at an unsteady plastic table, mountains of nachos in front of them, having already paid, and called something after him, but it was lost between Adam’s deaf ear and the blood pounding in his right ear. 

 

It took him longer than he wanted to find the block of temporary toilets, but he’d been rubbing at the ink on his hand the whole time, but it was still obvious on his skin. He pumped out a ridiculous amount of the cheap pink liquid soap provided, and scrubbed and scrubbed at his hand until his skin hurt and stung in the air and the writing was entirely gone. 

 

Ronan was going to know anyway. What was the point? 

 

He felt sick. Like he had been the one to eat four sticks of candy floss and a fanta. Ronan was going to know, and he was going to know (because it was just common fucking knowledge), that Adam must have been getting every single thing Ronan had ever drawn on his skin since the moment they first met. So Ronan was going to know that Adam had looked in on everything, and kept his mouth shut. Ronan was going to think Adam didn’t want him. Was going to think Adam was a perv. Was going to hate him. 

 

He couldn’t go back. He was a fool. 

 

He wandered - carefully so as not to be seen by them - out to the car park, wondering if maybe there was a bus stop nearby. Instead, he saw a couple of his Aglionby classmates heading back to their car, and decided, well, he was already a fuck up, and approached them. 

 

“Parrish!” Tad Carruthers called when Adam was a few metres away, “I didn’t know you liked this sort of thing!” 

 

Adam shrugged, not wanting to feed any sort of gossipy idea that of course he liked this sort of thing, he was small town trash. “Are you heading back into Henrietta?” he asked. 

 

“We are,” Tad grinned, “want a ride?” 

 

“Sure,” Adam said, shrugged again. 

 

“Did you get ditched by your other ride?” One of the boys asked, teasing, “Or a date gone wrong?” 

 

“No,” Adam said (yes), “I just wanted to leave earlier, and I saw Tad.” 

 

“Oh!” Tad said. 

 

“Ah,” the third boy said, “that’s right, you probably wanna go home and study, huh? Wouldn’t want any of us to take your place as the nerdiest in the school.” 

 

If Ronan were here he would probably make some cutting comment about how none of them were clever enough to even come close, or that no-one was gonna out nerd Adam. But if Ronan were here, Adam wouldn’t need this ride, so he kept his mouth shut. 

 

He ended up in the backseat, with Tad, which was odd because it was Tad’s car. 

 

“It’s because Jono already called shotgun,” Tad explained, “and I thought you might like to sit next to me.” 

 

Adam definitely didn’t care who he sat next to. He attempted to smile. Attempted to listen as Tad prattled on about where he planned to holiday next, and what his mother had said to him the last week, and how expensive his shoes were, and where did Adam cut his hair, and - 

 

It was a relief to get home, though he had them drop him in the middle of town, saying he needed to swing by the shops on the way home. He didn’t want them to know where he lived. Partly because he didn’t want them swinging by uninvited (or, didn’t want Tad swinging by uninvited). 

 

-

 

He didn’t know what to do once he got inside. He had a little bit of homework, and usually he would just do that, but. He didn't know what to do. Maybe he should write a note to Ronan. Say sorry. Sorry wasn’t going to cut it. He wondered if Noah was mad with him too. If they’d told Gansey. If Gansey was mad. God. 

 

Fuck. 

 

He had a shower. 

When he got out, the banging on his door started. He thought for a moment that maybe he could just ignore it, pretend he wasn’t here. But his light was on. And he didn’t like being a coward. So. He pulled his pants back on and answered the door. Ronan pushed right past him into the small flat, strode into the middle of it, head ducked so as not to wack it on the low ceiling. Adam shut the door, turned around to face him. 

 

“What the actual  _ fuck _ , Parrish!” Ronan snapped. 

 

Adam hadn’t figured out how to word his apology yet, how to explain away his silence on this. Ronan continued before he could try something out. 

 

“Do you have any idea how fucking freaked out Gansey’s been? How fucking freaked out we all were? How freaked I was?” 

 

Adam stared. 

 

“You just disappeared!” Ronan yelled, “Gone! We looked all over for you! Noah was convinced you’d been kidnapped by the clowns! Gansey thought your parents might have been there! We were your fucking ride, you shit stain!” 

 

“Oh,” Adam said. 

 

“Fuck!” Ronan added, scrubbed his hands up his face, and hit one of the beams of the low ceiling. “How the hell did you even get back here?” 

 

Adam didn’t want to say. “Tad,” he mumbled to the floor.  Ronan seemed to glow with anger. He didn’t say anything to that though, just groaned and turned, and dropped himself onto Adam’s bed. 

 

“I didn’t mean to freak y’all out,” Adam continued in a mumble, “I honestly didn’t. I didn’t think you’d even notice I was gone.” 

 

“What. The. Fuck.” Ronan said into Adam’s mattress. 

 

“Should I call Gansey?” Adam asked, shifting his weight to his other foot. Ronan was still lying face down on his bed, had dragged his hands up to lace his fingers together over his scalp. “Tell him I’m ok?” 

 

“I already called him,” Ronan grunted, “I saw you through the window.” 

 

“Oh,” Adam said. He was pleased he wouldn’t have to face up to this right now. Surprised Ronan would overcome his hate of talking on phones.

 

“Why the hell did you just fuck off like that?” Ronan asked, and now he was rolling over, pushing himself upright, staring at Adam accusingly. 

 

Adam gaped. He had been pretty certain, right up until this moment, that Ronan at the very least must have understood why he had left. 

 

“Uh,” he said. 

 

“I mean,” Ronan butted in, “I get you’ve been fucking avoiding marking me back, but I wasn’t going to - I - shit, man. You could’ve got her number if you fucking wanted it.” 

 

He felt like his entire jaw was just going to fall right off. Ronan looked entirely sour as he folded himself up around his knees, wrapping his arms tight around his legs, resting his cheek on his knees. 

 

“I get that you need your fucking independence, I wasn’t going to stop you.” 

 

One of them had definitely misunderstood something. 

 

“You knew?” Adam asked, after he’d given himself ten seconds to consider everything Ronan had just said. “That we were…?” 

 

Ronan rolled his eyes. “Obviously,” he said. 

 

This didn’t track. 

 

“What? Since when?” Adam asked, aware that possibly his voice was angrier sounding than it ought to be right now. 

 

Ronan shrugged. “A fucking while, now, ok? Obviously not as long as you. But. Look, I fucking got the hint, alright? Just - I’m here because you were fucking selfish fuck just leaving us to worry, not because of that girl who was all over you.” 

 

He needed a fucking rewind button. Or a pause. He needed more time to think about everything he was hearing. 

 

“You’re with Noah!” He tossed back at Ronan, “So it wasn’t like I was expecting  _ you _ to be jealous over me! I just didn’t realise you knew! I didn’t want you to know!” 

 

Now Ronan was staring at him like he wasn’t making any sense. Maybe it had been naive for Adam to think Ronan wouldn’t have figured it out as well. Maybe he should lock himself in his bathroom and not come out until Ronan left so he could think about this in peace. 

 

“I’m not with Noah,” Ronan said, quieter than he’d spoken before, “why the fuck would you think I’m with Noah?” 

 

“Uh,” Adam said sarcastically, crossing his arms across his chest tightly, “because I saw all the stuff you two wrote to each other  _ on my arms? _ Because I have eyes?” 

 

Ronan was shaking his head. 

 

“Ok,” he said, “is that why you didn’t say anything? Because you thought I was dating Noah?” 

 

That was one of the reasons, but it hadn’t been a reason at first. He shook his head. Ronan’s expression was muddy, unreadable. 

 

“I get why you wouldn’t say anything at first,” Ronan said, voice quieter still, “I was an asshole to you. But then we were friends. So why- ? I tried to understand it. It always just goes back to the same thing, doesn’t it? People are right about soulmarks. Sometimes they’re just platonic. Right?” 

 

Adam didn’t think so. But he wasn’t a scientist. 

 

“If you’re not dating Noah,” Adam said, throwing his thoughts back, trying to dig up evidence to prove he wasn’t crazy, “why the hell would you tell him you wanted to kiss him?” 

 

This apparently did the opposite of Adam’s intentions, because Ronan looked like Adam had just said something entire insane. 

 

“Uh,” he said, “I never told him that.” 

 

“You did!” Adam retorted, “That day on the hike! By the lake! While you were up the cliff. You wrote it on your hand for him -” 

 

“You,” Ronan snapped, “are so fucking stupid.” 

 

That was rude. 

 

“It was for you!” Ronan continued, “You absolute moronic imbecile, why would I - why the hell would I write that for Noah? If I had wanted to kiss him I would have said it out loud!” 

 

“You didn’t say it out loud to me!” Adam yelled back. He needed to not be yelling. 

 

Ronan stood up, hit his head on the ceiling, and swore loudly. “I thought you were asleep,” he said lowly, “when I wrote it. I thought you were asleep. I washed it off. I didn’t think you’d seen it.” 

 

“So why the hell did you write it, then?” Adam demanded. He wasn’t yelling now, but his voice was still awfully loud. 

 

“Why the fuck do you think?” Ronan retorted. He had his hands balled into fists, but only shoved them against his eyes, pressing them hard into his head. “I get it,” he said, hands still on his face, “I get that you don’t want it too. I get that you don’t want the marks. It’s not up to me.” 

 

None of this made any sense. 

 

“Give me a minute,” Adam said. Ronan glared at him. “I’m not - so much of this is new to me - I can’t - I can’t think. I need to think.” 

 

Ronan scoffed, turned his head away. Adam was expecting more anger, but when Ronan spoke it was quiet again. “I’ll go.” 

 

Adam wanted to tell him not to. To tell him it would only take a minute for him to wrap his head around it, but. He nodded. Ronan left. Adam collapsed down onto his mattress. 

 

Ronan knew. Had known. For how long? At least since that hike. He thought about Ronan not drawing over his arms, how Adam had been able to wear t-shirts. He thought about all the words in his palm that Ronan had written. Not for Noah. Had written knowing that Adam would see them. He thought about the ‘i love you’ on the night he’d gone deaf, wondered if it was how Ronan loved Gansey, how he loved Noah, how he loved Matthew, or if it was a different kind. Wondered if Noah knew.

 

He thought about his rules. How he hadn’t left Henrietta. How he was tired, and sad, and self-conscious all too often. Thought about how he’d already, months back, broken his rule of not thinking about Ronan with too much softness. He didn’t know what to do. 

 

He slept. 

 

-

 

‘I’m an ass’, he wrote on his palm the next morning, ‘i didn’t understand’. 

 

Ronan didn’t reply, but that was to be expected seeing as he was in church and shouldn’t be passing notes during the sermon. 

 

‘I’m sorry’, Adam added after a moment of deliberation. Then, he did his homework and waited for the heavy footfalls that fell on his stairway barely moments after church let out. 

 

When he opened the door, Ronan was leaning against the wall opposite, lower lip sucked into his mouth, expression stony. 

 

“I’m sorry,” Adam said out loud. “It wasn’t that I didn’t want  _ you _ .” 

 

“No,” Ronan shrugged, “I get it. It’s just that I’m a guy. Nothing to do with me.” 

 

“It’s not that,” Adam said, “I don’t care that you’re a guy - I don’t - I’m bi, I’m fine with that.” 

 

Ronan didn’t reply. He also didn’t make any move to come into the flat. 

 

“I had a rule,” Adam said, “I wouldn’t date before I left Henrietta.” 

 

Ronan frowned, snorted. Adam pressed on. 

 

“It was safer that way. They wouldn’t have to see where I came from, what I came from, or risk meeting my parents, and I wouldn’t have to risk my father being fucking pissed off about it.” 

 

Ronan’s frown deepened. He didn’t snort this time. 

 

“When I found out it was  _ you _ ,” Adam continued, “I didn’t like you at first, so I didn’t want to admit it to you. Because you were an ass.” Ronan rolled his eyes. “And then, when I did… when we were friends, I wanted to tell you, but - my father - and then … Noah, and I thought - I wanted to tell you. It just seemed easier. Safer not to. Not until I was out of here.” 

 

“That’s stupid,” Ronan said, finally breaking his silence. 

 

“You think I don’t know that?” Adam demanded, “It’s stupid, but it’s the truth. I was too scared to tell you, because I was scared for my safety, and then I was scared you’d reject me. Ok? Is that what you wanted to hear?” 

 

“No,” Ronan scowled, “none of this is what I wanted to hear.” 

 

“Well,” Ada snapped, “what about you? You didn’t tell me either!’ 

 

“Yeah!” Ronan said loudly, “Because when I realised, we’d already known each other for months and I figured you must have a reason for not telling me, and I thought the reason was because you hated that we were marked together!” 

 

This was meant to be Adam apologising right now. He wasn’t doing very well. 

 

“I’m sorry,” he said again. Ronan sagged against the wall. “Did you stop drawing for me?” he asked, “For the summer? So I could wear short sleeves without being found out?” 

 

Ronan heaved a sigh. Nodded. 

 

“Did you mean everything you wrote on your hand?” Adam asked then, thinking very hard about not thinking about the ‘love’ one. 

 

Ronan nodded again, then screwed his face up, “But,” he said harshly, “some of them were written in moments of… weakness.” 

 

“I didn’t write back,” Adam said, “because I didn’t think they were for me.” 

 

“You,” Ronan said, “are the stupidest Excellence student alive. You fucker.” 

 

“Probably,” Adam admitted, pressed his thumb against the words he’d written on his own skin for once. “I should have said something.” 

 

“You should have,” Ronan agreed. 

 

“Please just come in,” Adam said then, very aware of how voices travel, and how many people were probably still just downstairs. 

 

Ronan came in. He walked passed Adam in the doorway, headed straight for the bed, and sat down, stared at Adam as Adam closed the door and turned around, and joined him on the bed. 

 

“So,” he said, “there was never anything with Noah?” 

 

“No,” Ronan said, rolled his eyes, “I fucking love him, but not like that. Dip shit.” 

 

“Because you’re a traditional shit head, right?” Adam asked, “Waiting for your true love?” 

 

“Do you know,” Ronan said, voice a growl, “how fucking disappointed I was when I met you and there was no response? I thought it was you when you walked in, and then I thought I was wrong for the longest time.” 

 

Adam shut his eyes. 

 

“Can you just tell me,” Ronan said, “if you want this, or not? Stop making me guess, shit, Parrish. I don’t want to be wrong about this anymore.” 

 

“I was so jealous of Noah,” Adam mumbled, eyes still closed, “I was so jealous about the kiss and the pool, about the hearts, about every word you wrote in your palm. I told myself I wouldn’t be, that it was better that way. That I didn’t want to say anything until I left Henrietta anyway, but I was still - was still.” 

 

“Just tell me,” Ronan said, “please.” 

 

“I want this,” Adam said, opened his eyes, “shit, Lynch. I want it so much.” 

 

“Even though you’re still in Henrietta?” Ronan asked, difficult to tell if it was a joke or not. 

 

“I wish I wasn’t,” Adam said, “but yeah. Even so.” 

 

“Shit head,” Ronan mumbled, “Noah is gonna piss himself when he hears you thought we were dating.” 

 

“Jerk,” Adam grumbled back, turned to face Ronan. “You still wanna kiss me then?” 

 

“Don’t be a piss,” Ronan said, “of course I do.” 

  
  


-

  
  


There were definite downsides to being Ronan’s soulmate. For one, it meant that Ronan had the ability to write on Adam’s forehead while Adam gave a presentation during Science (something only Ronan got into trouble for, thank goodness), for another, because Ronan did hate phones, it meant half their communication was held via skin and Adam wasn’t a fan of being constantly scribbled on. However. As much as he didn’t like looking scrappy, he did like seeing Ronan’s jagged letters appear on his skin - all directed at him - and he did like having such a direct line to Ronan’s thoughts, and he did like that it wasn’t a secret. 

 

There were definite upsides to being Ronan’s soulmate. For one, it meant that Ronan had the ability to draw beautiful things onto Adam’s skin while Adam was away at university (and also occasionally some very, very dirty things), for another, because Adam had failed so very early on in keeping his thoughts about Ronan purely platonic, the idea of him being marked to someone else was horrifying to say the least. 

 

‘When tomorrow?’ he wrote on the back of his hand while he studied a reading on a Friday night at his dorm. Waited until Ronan started writing back, over Adam’s message, and then wiped his own question off. 

 

‘ASAP’ Ronan wrote. Adam rolled his eyes. 

 

‘ _ When _ ’, he repeated. 

 

‘11’ Ronan replied, then, ‘go to sleep. You’re keeping me awake.’

 

‘Dick’ Adam wrote, ‘you’re the one who wrote the entire murder squash song down my arms while i was trying to study.’ 

 

‘You love me,’ Ronan wrote, ‘you love me.’ 

 

‘I love you,’ Adam agreed, ‘shit head.’ 

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Hi guys! If you like my writing feel free to come yell at me on my Tumblr etoilegarden.tumblr.com


End file.
